Mid-Spring Self-Promotion

Marco Almada

Marco Almada

— 7 min read
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Mid-Spring Self-Promotion
Photo by Pierre Bamin / Unsplash

Hello, dear reader, and welcome to another issue of AI, Law, and Otter Things! This is a bit late in the month for my first newsletter of May, but there was quite a bit going on. I am making progress towards my book manuscript (but it's not done yet) and started to plan my move away from Luxembourg (more on that soon). In the meantime, we had all that kerfuffle surrounding the AI Omnibus, the Worst Poster Ever lost his latest lawsuit against OpenAI, and the Commission has released guidelines on the AI Act's high-risk classification and delayed yet again its digital sovereignty package. All in all, I imagine you've had enough to read in my absence.

So, what led me to share this post? Well, I'd say equal parts procrastination, self-promotion, and reaching out for interactions. Starting with the latter, this week the CPDP conference is taking place in Brussels. That yearly event reunites many of the people working on technology law and, although I do not see myself in that way, many good friends are there. It would have been nice to catch up with people, but I could not find the time to travel there. Still, if you are going to TILTing Perspectives or the ICON-S conference next month, please say "hi"!

As for the other two points, they will appear in the rest of the newsletter, as usual. I will write down some thoughts on the AI Omnibus and its potential global impact, and then share stuff I think you'd might be interested in: readings, academic events, opportunities. Some of these, but not all, will have to do with me. And, finally, there will be a cute otter for your appreciation. Hope you enjoy!

Notes on the AI Omnibus

Earlier this week, I joined a roundtable on the Digital Omnibus, organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. It reunited many practitioners, as well as some academics, and some information about the discussions will be shared by the organizers. Since the debate took place under the Chatham House Rule, my goal here is not to add more detail or a different perspective on the discussion. I will, instead, take my preparation for it as a starting point for another rant some tangentially related comments.

In a forthcoming book chapter in the Elgar Handbook on the Global Governance of AI, I make the case that the EU AI Act's influence falls short of the kind of Brussels Effect expected by the Commission and other actors. To a large extent, this is because today's world is different in critical aspects from the one in which the GDPR came into force, not least because of the US's more overt embrace of neo-royalism. This changed geopolitical context means that the diffusion of EU-inspired regulatory models is not always welcome by other polities, which sometimes even push back against it. And, although the EU has relied on other instruments to promote its regulatory model, such as trade agreements, these instruments too are subject to competition with other political actors. The Omnibus cannot really change this broader context, and some other EU measures (such as the push for digital sovereignty) will likely exacerbate it in the long run.

Another factor that matters is that the AI Act is not the only game in town: there are alternative regulatory templates, both more light-handed and more stringent. Given that stringency is one of the key elements of the Brussels Effect, this reduces quite a bit the incentive for actors to comply with the AI Act beyond European borders. The Omnibus does not really strengthen the EU's position as an AI regulator in this regard, for a few reasons:

  1. There is little actual 'simplification' going on in it: the changes proposed to the legal text do not really tackle any of the main regulatory burdens faced by companies (and, as Anu Bradford points out, technology-specific regulation is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of European hostility to innovation).
  2. For all their lip service to small mid-caps and SMEs, the reforms favour big interests: not just the usual suspects in Silicon Valley, but major European industries that were actively involved in pursuing carve-outs and exceptions for their own sectors.
  3. Given that the reforms are framed as 'technical' changes to the AI Act, they never had the ambition to tackle any of the structural issues that many critiques of this regulation raised. Any economic boosts will therefore be localized at best.
  4. Although the final agreement on the AI Omnibus trimmed some of the excesses of the Commission's proposal, and introduced new measures such as prohibiting certain kinds of AI systems, the final text does not do much to strengthen fundamental rights protection, and arguably dilutes it in certain points.

As such, even a charitable reading of the post-Omnibus AI Act cannot really say that it will become a stronger protector of fundamental rights. And, if we are being particularly honest, my money is on it having a limited economic effect, except for a handful of special interests. But then again, there is so much going on that it will be difficult to even measure the causal effect of these changes.

Beyond the potential for global emulation of the AI Act, the mere existence of a European law for AI had a symbolic effect. As Renan Gadoni Canaan and Thales Bueno show, sometimes lawmakers elsewhere referred to EU law not as a template to be emulated, but as a tool to push back against claims that regulation would be impossible or kill the regulated sector: "If you can comply with detailed laws in Europe, why not here?" And this aspect is what is most weakened by the Omnibus.

Because the rhetoric surrounding the Omnibus is that Europe has gone too far in regulation and must now simplify things for the sake of innovation, promoters of legislation that offer extensive protection to fundamental rights and other public values will now have to cope with the counter-argument "Europe tried that and regretted it, why should we commit the same mistake?" It does not matter that these changes have taken place before most of the more stringent rules came into force. It does not matter that other regulations (except in China and maybe in the US if something ever takes place there) are unlikely to be as dependent on specific technical knowledge than Europe's bureaucratic approach to the internal market. The change in European posture is a symbol of the way the wind blows, and this new direction is not necessarily sympathetic to rights. It remains to be seen how that will matter in practice.

Recommendations

Good news, everyone! An article I wrote with Niovi Vavoula and Giacomo Zampieri, titled 'The triple helix: markets, fundamental rights, and security in EU digital law', has been accepted for publication at European Law Open. We have already submitted the proofs back to the publisher, so the article should be available in open access at this link some time soon (but not as of today, yet).

Hart Publishing just released 'The EU Artificial Intelligence Act: A Theamtic Commentary', edited by Gianclaudio Malgieri, Gloria Gonzalez Fuster, Alessandro Mantelero, and Gabriela Zanfir-Fortuna. Among other contributions, it features a chapter I wrote with Giovanni De Gregorio on the mixed nature of the AI Act as both a product safety law and a fundamental rights instrument.

Now, for the stuff written by otter other people:

Opportunities

Disclaimer: as usual, I am gathering these links purely for convenience and because I think they might be of interest to readers of this newsletter. Unless I explicitly say otherwise, I am not involved with any of the selection processes indicated below.

Next Friday (29 May), the Chair in Cyber Policy will host Ambassador Luc Dockendorf for a talk on 'Cyber Diplomacy in Times of Turmoil'. Join us at the Weicker building (or online), with the talk starting at 12:30, preceded by lunch at 12:00 for those joining in person.

Dear friends and readers in the Netherlands, on the third week of June you'll have enough of me for a while:

  • On 18 June, I will present my manuscript 'Delegating the Laws of Tomorrow: The Hidden Costs of Technology-Neutral Regulation' at ALTI.amsterdam, from 12:00 to 13:00.
  • On 19 June, I will participate in two panels at TILTing Perspectives 2026:
    • At 11:50 in 'Digital sovereignty compared and contrasted' (chaired by Panos Delimatsos), I will talk about the legal scaffolding behind the EU's push for digital sovereignty
    • At 14:40 in the session 'Fundamental Rights in the Digital Age' (chaired by Frederik Zuiderveen Borgesius), I will present the forthcoming paper with Niovi and Giacomo that I linked above

It would be lovely to see some of you there!

The European University Institute (EUI) is seeking its next Chair in 'Private Law, Power, and the Economy'. Applications are due by 3 June.

The Business and Law Research Group at the University of Antwerp invites contributions to the Legal Ecosystems Conference (LECO 2026). Extended abstracts are due by 30 June, with the event taking place from 12 to 14 October.

My colleagues at the Luxembourg Centre for European Law will host a PhD workshop on “Green and Digital Transitions in the Single Market”. Send your abstract by 1 July, and the event itself will take place on 11 and 12 November.

On 8 and 9 July, the Academy of European Law (ERA) will host a webinar on cybersecurity. I will be one of the speakers in this webinar, talking about the Cybersecurity Act and the ongoing legislative debates on its replacement.

The Copenhagen Business School is hiring two PhD students in law. Applications are due by 15 July.

And now, the otter

a bird standing on its hind legs in the grass
Photo by Ray Hennessy / Unsplash

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